“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
Source: Giovanni's Room
Quotes from bookGiovanni's Room
Giovanni's Room is a 1956 novel by James Baldwin. The book focuses on the events in the life of an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men in his life, particularly an Italian bartender named Giovanni whom he meets at a Parisian gay bar.
“Nobody can stay in the garden of Eden,' Jacques said. And then: 'I wonder why.”
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
I have thought about Jacques' question since. Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road - and the road has a trick of being most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright - and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden. Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or.
Pt. 1, Ch. 2 - p.22
Giovanni's Room (1956)
“I am beginning to feel like part of a travelling circus.”
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
Pt. 1, Ch. 3 - p.45
Giovanni's Room (1956)
“She is smiling and her eyes are kind but now the smile is purely social”
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
Pt. 1, Ch. 3 - p.62
Giovanni's Room (1956)
“I felt so aimless - like a tennis ball, bouncing, bouncing - I began to wonder where I'd land.”
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
Pt. 2, Ch. 4 - p.108
Giovanni's Room (1956)
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
Pt. 1, Ch. 1 - p.4-5 [Page numbers per the 2007 Penguin Books paperback edition.]
Source: Giovanni's Room (1956)
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
for the lack of it.' Pt. 1, Ch. 3 - p.51
Source: Giovanni's Room (1956)
“People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.”
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
Source: Giovanni's Room
“With everything in me screaming No! yet the sum of me sighed Yes.”
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
Source: Giovanni's Room
“For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.”
James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room
Source: Giovanni's Room
